VIDEO SATURDAY - ROSE MARIE AND THE HOLLYWOOD SQUARES

HOLLYWOOD SQUARES

For Part One of the Video Weekend tribute to Rose Marie, we're going to showcase a slew of 'Squares'!

I don't know if Ms. Marie gets a good showcase in these first few episodes, but it has Jonathan Winters.  So that's why I'm leading with them.

Rose Marie took part with other stars in Rich Little's spoof of 'Hollywood Squares' and the disaster movie fad:

Finally, here we have Ms. Marie reflecting on the fourteen years she spent on the show.....

THUMBS UP!

THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY - ROSE MARIE AND THE GIBBONS GIRLS

There have been a lot of great TV characters who were never seen on TV:

• Carlton the Doorman ('Rhoda')
• Vera Peterson ('Cheers')
• Maris Crane ('Frasier')
• Mrs. Bloom ('The Goldbergs')
• Mr. Dennehy ('The Jackie Gleason Show')
• Mrs. Columbo ('Columbo')
• Dr. Lars Lindstrom ('The Mary Tyler Moore Show')
• Charlie Townsend ('Charlie's Angels')
• Mrs. Wolowitz ('The Big Bang Theory')
• Robin Masters ('Magnum P.I.')
• Orson ('Mork & Mindy')
• Sarah ('The Andy Griffith Show')

There are a few others, some to be found in British series.

But today we're taking a look at another great unseen character......

Sally Rogers: 

Wait till you hear. I went up to Connecticut this morning to visit my Aunt Agnes. You remember her, Rob. She's the one who says, "It is wise for a poor man to choose the weather, but it's folly for a rich man to choose a poor man"....  Don't try to figure it out. My Aunt Agnes was born on a hill.

Sally Rogers: 
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. My Aunt Agnes was right. You know what she said when she saw Randy at the bowling alley? She said, "Sally, you can't tell a book if the title's covered."
Buddy Sorrell: 
Y'know, I don't feel very good.
Sally Rogers: 
What's the matter?
Buddy Sorrell: 

I'm beginning to understand Aunt Agnes.

(Both from 'The Twizzle')

Sally Rogers:
Hey! I got an idea for a line. My Aunt Agnes used to have a saying that went, uh, "If your heart is where the sky is bluest, then the sound of winter's twilight will be your friend."
Buddy Sorrell: 
Your aunt said that?
Sally Rogers: 
Yeah... and every time I think of it, I want to cry.
Buddy Sorrell: 
Why?
Sally Rogers: 
Because I think my Aunt Agnes is a nut!
(From 'The Thing About Women')

Sally Rogers: 
It's just like my Aunt Agnes always says, "It's better to get a rose from a casual friend than to get a can of succotash from a hoodlum."
(From "Romance, Roses, And Rye Bread”)

Sally’s Aunt Agnes sounds like she would have hit it off with Gracie Allen.  But she may have had a good reason for being a bit flighty.  Raising boisterous man-hungry triplets who were the identical cousins to Sally Rogers would drive anybody up the wall. 

Put on your waders, folks.  From this point on, we’re knee-deep in conjecture!

This is my theory of relateeveety – Aunt Agnes (whose last name was Gibbons) was the mother of these three women:

Myrna Gibbons
'The Doris Day Show' 
50 episodes

Bertha (Gibbons)
'My Sister Eileen'
(& 'The Bob Cummings Show')
24 episodes

Martha (Gibbons) Randolph'The Bob Cummings Show'9 episodes

Upon graduating high school in 1941, all three Gibbons girls left home and moved out to California to seek their fortunes – hopefully with a special fellow thrown into the bargain for each of them.  In fact, Martha married a college student who was attending California University.  But before the year was out, young Mister Randolph had quit school and joined the Army because of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  While in France assigned to King Company at some point after D-Day, Private Randolph was killed in action, leaving Martha a widow.  

BERTHA GIBBONS

(with Bob Collins)

MARTHA GIBBONS RANDOLPH
(with Bertha Krause & Charmaine Schultz)

 For a time, Bertha and Martha lived together in Los Angeles and both worked as secretaries in the same building.  Some of the businesses who were tenants in the building were the Taft Schreiber Talent Agency and Bob Collins’ photography studio.  But by 1959, Bertha thought that by living with her sister, both of them were being stifled in their love lives.  So she packed up and moved back East.  Having no intention of returning to Connecticut, Bertha moved to New York City where she got a secretarial job in the office of publisher D.X. Beaumont.  There she became good friends with Ruth Sherwood and her sister Eileen.

Martha meanwhile remained in California where she became friends with other secretaries in the building, like Charmaine “Schultzy” Schultz and a woman with the same first name as her sister, Bertha Krause.  There was one time where they formed their own singing group, the Bobolinks. 

While Bertha and Martha lived together in Los Angeles, their sister Myrna moved farther north, to San Francisco.  There she got a job at Today’s World magazine as secretary to Ron Harvey, assistant editor of the magazine.  She became close friends with Doris Martin, who came to work there as the executive secretary to the magazine’s editor Michael Nicholson.

I like to think that as the counter-culture bloomed in San Francisco, Myrna Gibbons got in touch with her inner self and then explored all facets of her life, including her sexuality… not that there was anything wrong with that……

But Doris Martin felt uncomfortable with that idea...

As Sally Rogers mentioned, Agnes Gibson lived in Connecticut.  Since the town or city was not mentioned, and as Earth Prime-Time is my personal sandbox (although I don’t own the action figures I play with in there), I’m going to claim that she lived in Meriden, once the Silver Capital of the World.  Meriden has at least one mention in Toobworld, in perhaps one of the most important TV shows ever when dealing with crossovers.  In an episode of ‘St. Elsewhere’, the son of Dr. Kiem and her husband Kevin had run away from Choate prep school in Wallingford but was later found hitch-hiking in Meriden.

Besides, I’m from Meriden originally.  And I’m a member of the League of Themselves and the TV Crossover Hall of Fame (‘The Hap Richards Show’, ‘Ranger Andy’, ‘Late Show with David Letterman’, “The Deadliest Season”.)  

My sandbox.  My rules.

One other point – Agnes Gibbons was the godmother to a woman who also bore that name.  “Aganess” (as her former boyfriend – Inspector Frank Luger of the NYPD pronounced it) lived in New York City and was about the same age as Sally, Myrna, Bertha, and Martha.  I don’t think she looked like the four of them.

O'BSERVATIONS:

My apologies for the quality of some pictures.  They are frame grabs from multi-gen copies off YouTube.

As with Aunt Agnes, Bertha's last name was never given (as far as I can tell), which is why I have Gibbons in parentheses.  And to qualify the discrepancy of Martha having the last name of Randolph, I made that her married name.  That they graduated in 1941 provided a way to get her widowed before the 1950s came around.

I shake my fist in impotent anger that the IMDb has dropped the category of searchable character names.  I bet I could have found an appropriate young man in the early 1940s with the last name of Randolph.

I didn't want to do a direct post about Sally Rogers.  Better televisiologists than me have already covered her in depth in books and online.  So I came up with this theory of relateeveety to dance around Sally as the topic.  It's probably my favorite post for this week of tributes to Rose Marie.

OTHER SHOWS SUGGESTED:

• 'Barney Miller'
• 'Saved By The Bell'
• 'Beverly Hills 90210'
• 'Combat!'
• 'St. Elsewhere'

BCnU!

THE HAT SQUAD THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY FOR ROSE MARIE - MEET THE TARANTINOS

"Mrs. Tarantino is a nice lady who has to work hard for a living."

Dobie Gillis

'THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS'

In Toobworld, fictional TV characters can be related to people from the real world.  Of course, those "real people" are actually "televersions" of themselves in a fictional setting. 

This means - as an example - Sammy Davis Jr. as seen in episodes of 'All In The Family' and 'Archie Bunker's Place' was just as fictional as Archie himself.

Here are the best examples of TV characters related to "real people":

'ALICE'

Vera Gorman & Art Carney

'THE NANNY'
Sammy & Bryant and Greg Gumbel

'THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM'
Little Jimmy & Nat King Cole

'HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREET'
Detective Megan Russert & Tim Russert (and by extension, Tim's son Luke)

So why are we bringing that up now when we're celebrating the career of Rose Marie?  

'THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS'
"THE PRETTIEST COLLATERAL IN TOWN"

From the IMDb:
To help his father's chances of securing a loan, Dobie agrees to date the banker's spoiled-brat daughter.

Herbert is applying for a much needed loan for the business. Dobie inadvertently threatens the loan by his actions in front of the loan officer, Mr. McCurdy. But Mr. McCurdy ends up being a spineless man when it comes to his wife and daughter, the latter, Mignonne McCurdy, who, like her mother, is a rigid and self-assured person. What Mignonne wants is a pliable man she can mold into her vision, that man being Dobie, who she wants to be her date at a party she is hosting on Saturday night. McCurdy infers that Herbert's loan is dependent on Dobie keeping that date, which Herbert would like him to do. Dobie, who has not even yet met Mignonne, has to decide what to do: keep the date to help his hard working father get the loan, or be true to his heart and not keep the date as Dobie is already in love with Melissa Frome, who he considers the perfect girlfriend as she sees in him the perfect boyfriend.
Written by Huggo

In this episode of Dobie Gillis, Rose Marie played a Mrs. Tarantino.

So why couldn't she be related to film director/writer and actor Quentin Tarantino?

There is a televersion of Tarantino in Toobworld, but it's mostly through implication.  Here are the credits which I consider to be representative of Tarantino's televersion:

"The Muppets' Wizard of Oz"
Kermit's Director

If a director looks like an actual director, why shouldn't it be that guy?

'Saturday Night Live'
Guest Host

'SNL' is established as a TV show within the TV Universe.

'The Golden Girls' - "Sophia's Wedding: Part 1" (1988) 
... Elvis Impersonator

This was before he hit it big with "Reservoir Dogs" and probably needed the gig.  See if you can pick him out of the crowd....

But his existence in Toobworld is buoyed by all of the mentions of him and his talent/career to be found in other TV shows.

Here are just a few examples:

Melissa & Joey
Auction Hero (2011)

Lennox Scanlon is having problems in writing her novel.

Ryder Scanlon:
"You know, when I'm editing my digital films I use index cards.
All the great filmmakers use them -
Quentin Tarantino, Tyler Perry...."

Hot in Cleveland
God and Football (2012)
Victoria donates blood as a publicity stunt and wakes up thinking Elka is God.

Victoria:
“Who do I have to sleep with to win an Oscar?
It certainly wasn't Quentin Tarantino.
I wish I could take that back.”

Person of Interest
Pretenders (2014)
John and others try to prevent a fake detective from getting himself killed.

Carl Elias:
Chicago's a mess, John.
It's like a damn Tarantino movie out there.

The IT Crowd
Moss and the German (2007)
Just as Moss and Roy start to watch a Tarantino bootleg, Jeff (who wants to be called “Dominator”) calls in hopes of spoiling it for them.

Jeff (The Dominator):
I was just wondering, have you seen the new Tarantino film? 
Roy:
I'm just about to watch it, Jeff. 
Jeff:
I’ve already seen it! Anyway, at the end, there's a very unusual twist.
[Roy hangs up.]

Psych
This Episode Sucks (2011)
Shawn and Gus investigate a string of murders which appear to have been committed by a vampire.

Shawn Spencer:
What did I tell ya'? 
No one remembers "Blacula"
except us and Quentin Tarantino.

Call My Agent!
Cécile (2015)
Actress Cécile de France is thrilled to work with one of the best American film directors. Unfortunately her agent has bad news for her.

 Those are just a few examples.  Other TV shows which treat Tarantino as a fictional member of their world are:

• ‘Ray Donovan’
• ‘Camp’
• ‘White Collar’
• ‘The Mysteries Of Laura’
• ‘American Horror Story’

and over in another dimension,

• ‘Castle’

 And so to expand this fictional televersion of Quentin Tarantino, we’re going to add Mrs. Tarantino who lives with her crippled husband in the same town where the Gillis family lives.  And there she works in the local teenage hangout as a waitress, always cracking with the jokes.

Mrs. Tarantino is not related to the movie wunderkind by blood.  He’s actually related to her by marriage; it’s her unseen husband who can claim to be the actual member of the family.  They weren’t a close family as Mr. and Mrs. Tarantino live in the Midwest while Quentin was born in Knoxville, Tennessee.  (By the time he was four years old, he and his mother moved to Torrance, California.)

By the way, at the time of the ‘Dobie Gillis’ episode, the televersion of Li’l Quentin wasn’t even born yet.  “The Prettiest Collateral In Town” took place in 1960 and QT came along three years later.  Like I said, in Toobworld they probably weren’t very close.

Thumbs up!

A HAT SQUAD THEORY OF "BORN TO RERUN" - BUDDY & SALLY IN THE 1830s

In Toobworld, reincarnation exists.  It’s stated plainly in the lyrics for the theme song of ‘My Mother The Car’:

Everybody knows in a second life,
we all come back sooner or later.

As anything from a pussycat
to a man-eating alligator.

But sometimes the Powers That Be like to not only bring back one soul into another life, but also to bring back another soul who had been closely linked with the first one.  It is as though the destinies of those two souls would be forever entwined.

We may have the same situation here.  Sally Rogers and Buddy Sorrell had been partners long before they worked together as the writers for ‘The Alan Brady Show’ (the beans and sauerkraut to Rob Petrie’s frankfurter).  They had a musical comedy stage act together under the name “Gilbert & Solomon”. 

And they were so good at their jobs that they became well-known to the general public (probably to the chagrin of their former boss Alan Brady who never liked to share the spotlight.)  This was proven by their manifestation in the mind of a young man named Herman Brooks.

But what if they had been partnered earlier… in previous lives?

‘THE ADVENTURES OF JIM BOWIE’
“CHOCTAW HONOR”

From the Classic TV Archives:
Adventures of Jim Bowie: CHOCTAW HONOR
production B-23
03Jan58
Guest Cast:
Morey Amsterdam ............... Pinky
Robert Warwick ................ Chief Minko
Stewart Bradley ............... Whiskey Jack
Rose Marie .................... Honey Chile
Alex Stagg .................... Pat Crow

From the IMDb:
Bowie helps a Choctaw Indian who has been accused by the Choctaw tribe of the murder and robbery of a tribal member.

From tv.com:
When Jim Bowie is robbed, he learns that the man who robbed him is also wanted by an Indian tribe for murder.

From TV Guide:
Bowie (Scott Forbes) opposes a murderous robber. Crow: Alex Stagg. Honey Chile: Rose Marie. Chief Minko: Robert Warwick.

SAM HOUSTON & JIM BOWIE

‘The Adventures Of Jim Bowie’ took place in Louisiana during the 1830s and was loosely based on the life of the frontiersman and politician who died at the Alamo.  Played by Scott Forbes, Bowie met a lot of historical figures, like Sam Houston, and other characters who only existed in Toobworld.

Among these were Pinky and Honey Chile In the episode described above.  Unfortunately, I’ve never seen it and aside from their listing in the credits, I know nothing more about their involvement.  Based on their names and the personalities of Amsterdam and Ms. Marie, I would think Pinky and Honey Chile were traveling performers, perhaps with a medicine wagon.  They may have run a saloon in area where Bowie was attacked.  But one thing I would hope is that it didn’t turn out that they were the ones responsible for the death of that Choctaw Indian, blaming it on the Indian suspected by the tribe.  (Because there are characters in the episode with scurvy names like “Whiskey Jack”, I’m hoping that is not the case.)

But even if they were the villains of the piece, that doesn’t detract from this “Born To Rerun” theory in which Pinky would be reincarnated one day as Maurice Sorrell and Honey Chile would return as Sally Rogers.  The whole point of reincarnation, the way I understand it, is that the soul continues to the next life on a quest of spiritual improvement.  And so if Pinky and Honey Chile were the bad guys, they could have had a second chance as the much more welcomed Buddy and Sally.  And if they were a couple of itinerant performers, then in their next life they became much more successful in that pursuit.

Hopefully one day I’ll see that episode.  (Bugs me that of all the episodes I found online, ‘Choctaw Honor’ was not one of them.)

If anybody in Team Toobworld has seen it, or even better, own a copy, get in touch with me.  I'd love to get a screencap of Pinky and Honey Chile, but at the very least I would like to know how their particular storyline played out.

Thumbs up!

 

THE HAT SQUAD TWO FOR TUESDAY - ROSE MARIE & THE TWO MRS. BRACKENS

As our salute to the late Rose Marie today, we're going to look at a character she played twice for Two for Tuesday.  There is a hitch however - she played the role in two different metafictional universes, not just TV dimensions.  And they had different first names.

But a little dab o' splainin will do ya!

First up, Ms. Marie played Mrs. Ida Bracken in the 1980 movie "Cheaper To Keep Her".  This was a 1981 "comedy" starring Mac Davis and Tovah Feldshuh, directed by Ken Annakin (the inspiration for Darth Vader's real first name.)  The only real points of interest were that it marked J. Pat O'Malley's final film role and Ian McShane met his wife on set.  Leonard Maltin damned it as “sexist, racist, and obnoxious.”

In the movie, Davis played a divorced private eye working for a feminist attorney; his job was to track down deadbeat husbands to make them pay their back alimony.

One of their clients was Mrs. Ida Bracken, whose milquetoast husband Stanley had finally found the courage to leave her.  Feeling emboldened, mousy Stanley, who was nominally a junk store owner, was hiding a fortune from his ex-wife which he had gained by being a bookie.  I haven’t seen this movie (according to Wikipedia, it’s hard to find), but based on this picture I think Mrs. Bracken was able to brow-beat Stanley into getting back together with her.  At the very least, to cough up the undisclosed funds he owed her.

That movie took place at least partially in Long Beach, California, because scenes were filmed on board the Queen Mary which is docked there.  However, in Toobworld, Mrs. Edna Bracken lived in New Haven, Connecticut, which is another strike against the claim that both Mrs. Brackens were the same woman but in two different universes.

Edna Bracken was the building manager for an apartment building in which weatherman Brian Stevens and his daughter Jessica lived… with an ancient dragon named ‘Scorch’.

‘Scorch’ was a pretty bad CBS show that was broadcast twelve years after the debut of the movie “Cheaper To Keep Her”.  Here Rose Marie was something of a battle-axe, always threatening to evict Brian Stevens, although she did seem to have a soft spot for young Jessica. 

Edna Bracken was always coming up with new sets of rules about living in the building and one of those was a very strict edict against pets.  With Scorch being able to talk (and looking like the puppet he was in the real world), Brian passed off the dragon as a puppet prop he used during his weatherman appearances on WWEN-TV in New Haven.  But it always looked like a close call that she might realize he was alive and not a dummy.

As I mentioned, it’s my contention that Ida Bracken and Edna Bracken were the same person, but as seen in two different universes – the Cineverse, the movie universe whose name was coined by Craig Shaw Gardner, and Earth Prime-Time, the main Toobworld in the TV Universe.

The only real difference is the difference in those first names.  Apparently, her parents in each of those worlds had different opinions as to which name they preferred.  I’d like to think that in the movie universe, the husband won out while the televersion of her mother was the victor in Toobworld.

In each universe, I’m assuming she still married Stanley Bracken.  But in Toobworld, Edna Bracken was widowed by 1992 and apparently never divorced.  For alls I know, had we met her again in the Cineverse (Ha!), Ida Bracken could well have seen her former husband dead by that time as well.  (And I think Jack Gilford would have played him in Toobworld as well.)

As for the difference in locations, I think the Brackens in both universes were originally from Connecticut.  But while Edna and Stanley remained in the Nutmeg State, Ida and Stanley moved to the Golden State.

We’ll be back tomorrow with another look at characters played by Rose Marie……

Thumbs up!

THE HAT SQUAD - REMEMBERING ROSE MARIE

From the Los Angeles Times:
Rose Marie, an actress, singer and comedian best known for portraying the wisecracking Sally Rogers in the popular 1960s sitcom “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” died [December 28], according to her agent and official website. She was 94.

Marie died about 2 p.m. in Van Nuys, her agent, Harlan Boll, said. He did not release any additional details.

Cast as a glib, man-hunting comedy writer on the show, Marie continued playing the part, in a way, on other stages years after the role ended.

For the rest of her life, while making public appearances, she invariably wore the black hair bow that had been her signature on the sitcom.
- Valerie J. Nelson

For the rest of this week I'll be paying tribute to those characters of Rose Marie in Toobworld.  She was such a vital part of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, forever nestled in its berth at Number Three of my Top Five favorites.  It never occurred to me while I watched it as a kid that Sally Rogers was such a trailblazer in that show business world; I just thought it was natural for a woman that funny should get paid for it - and even more importantly, be treated as an equal among the men she worked with.

And even if she played to a certain type in other roles, playing up just one aspect of Sally's character, Rose Marie exuded the strength of that character to be herself.  

So I'll be showcasing some of those characters as the week progresses......

Thumbs up!

O'BSERVATION:
This is the 11,000th post for Inner Toob.  Can't think of a more wonderful person to mark the occasion.